Where are they now? Harold Dow

The pearl-handled pistol was tucked in his boss’ belt, just waiting there in case it was needed.

Harold Dow and the news director who hired him were targets, the objects of death threats that swamped the TV station’s switchboard.

The people of Omaha, Neb., had never seen a black TV reporter on the air, not until that evening in 1968 when Dow stumbled through history on ABC affiliate KETV. No one seemed ready for him.

“They were calling me everything but a child of God,” said Dow, then a 20-year-old student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

“They threatened my life, and they threatened [Lee Terry’s] life for hiring me. When he got off the set, I came to him and said, ‘Lee, I don’t think I need all this attention.’

“And as he was tucking a white, pearl-handled pistol into his belt, he looked at me and said, ‘If I’m willing to go through this, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be.’ I said, ‘Are you going to give me a gun?’ He said, ‘Hell no.’Ÿ”
Welcome to TV, kid.

It was Dow’s first day on the job and his first time in front of a camera. He was more than 1,200 miles from home. But the lessons he learned growing up in Hackensack — especially on the wrestling mat and the football field — got him through that day and the four decades he’s since spent in TV news.

Dow, 62, is a correspondent on CBS’ “48 Hours Mystery” and has been a staple on “48 Hours” since its inception in 1988. The five-time Emmy winner served as a contributor on the “CBS Evening News with Dan Rather’’ and was among the first journalists to report on the crack epidemic. The Upper Saddle River resident also obtained the first network interviews with Patty Hearst, and with O.J. Simpson after the Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman murders.

“I’ve traveled all over the world. I’ve seen things few people in life get a chance to see up front and personal,” Dow said in his distinctive, deep voice. “I covered the tsunami in Sri Lanka. I was in South Africa when Nelson Mandela was freed. I traveled with him across the United States when he gave his tour. There’s just moments, places I’ve been that I think truly changed my life.”

It all began in Hackensack, where Dow was a district and County champion while wrestling at 130 pounds as a senior. He also played defensive end for notable Comets football coach Tom Della Torre.

“In the end, you’re out there by yourself,” Dow said of wrestling. “Your team can’t help you. Your coach can’t help you. It’s you and this guy. And that experience has played out in my life, because in the end, when you leave high school and you leave your friends, it’s you and the world.”

That’s largely what Dow faced in Omaha. The threats were serious enough that Terry, then the news director and newscaster at KETV, accepted a police escort home each night for months. He also had his home twice swept for bombs by the FBI, he said.

“Harold had trouble in the beginning putting together two sentences on the air,” said the retired Terry, whose son, Lee, is a Nebraska congressman. “But he was determined to be a big and good TV talent.

“He would go home and read stuff in a tape recorder, and when I would go home at midnight, he would be waiting at my door for me to listen to and for me to criticize. And then we would make new tapes while he was there. He would keep me up to the wee hours.”

Dow returned to Hackensack after a few years, working as a news anchor at WPAT radio in Paterson and hungry to break into a big-city market.

“He took a tape recorder and practiced his delivery for hours. We thought he was crazy,” said James Dow, the Englewood municipal judge and Harold’s older brother.

“He would sit alone and talk into the tape recorder, reading stories from the newspaper and reading them again until he got the inflection he wanted.”

Dow then took a leap of faith, flying to Los Angeles with no leads and no money, but worked his way to the CBS affiliate in 1972. A decade later, he was working in New York. By the time he landed the Hearst interview in 1976, he was a journalism heavyweight.

But the roots of Dow’s career trace back to Hackensack and his grandmother’s farm in South Carolina, where he spent his childhood summers picking cotton and tobacco.

“It reminded me where we came from,” he said. “It wasn’t pretty. I can say that.”

Dow grew silent for a moment, his eyes hidden behind his mirrored sunglasses. Tears began streaming down his cheeks.